The advent of social media in the advertising space has completely revolutionized the entire consumer market. The good news is it opens up a whole new dimension for interacting with the present and future customers. The bad news, however, is that almost everybody knows that. So how do you leverage this particular medium for more visibility, customer engagement, and eventually greater profits? Well, there isn’t one set formula to this question. A lot depends on the demographics, the geography, the psychological and the behavioral traits of the TG apart from many other factors. Still, there are a few pointers to keep in mind to ensure a good social media strategy for your restaurant.

Identify the core social media interface of your Target Group

What is your target audience? Are they active Instagram users or do they prefer to spend time on Facebook or maybe Snapchat? The point here is, that it is very important to hit when the iron is hot. A good way of finding out the social media preference of your Target Group is a clever addition to your feedback form with a question like “Which of these would you prefer to connect with us” and then give them the options along with “None of these”.

Frequent customer engagement activities

Another crucial factor is the level of indulgence from the customer or potential customer’s end. A few of the restaurants who have had success in this area have started with small simulation games and puzzles for an everyday winner in reward of a free meal (capped to a bill amount). The advantage of such frequent customer engagement activities is that it not only improves popularity among the audience involved, it also significantly increases restaurant’s reach through word of mouth. Any marketer will tell that word of mouth is the fastest and most effective channel of marketing any product/service.

Live broadcasts

Facebook recently added a feature of live video broadcasting to its subscribers. Many restaurants quickly leveraged it and started broadcasting various activities going on in their restaurants to gain traction. Not only did it help in some immediate crowd pull but also helped reach a wider audience than expected by a conventional advertisement. And this is just one example of how to leverage the newest features of these social media platforms. A good marketer always keeps a close eye on such advancements and capitalizes on them before anyone else.

Live table availability trackers

Social media doesn’t always have to be advertising and promotional activities. It can also offer more functional benefits like information like table availability in the restaurant at a particular given time. This service can be particularly helpful in giving your customer more than just an offer to look forward to on your social media interface.

Viral Marketing through outbreaks

This type of marketing doesn’t have a particular channel of lead generation. It is usually about leveraging something outbreak to your advantage. This might not necessarily be genre specific. It can be a TV show, an application on play store or even a mobile game that has record breaking downloads. However, the key is to leverage the first mover advantage of a particular outbreak. Similarly, one can collaborate with fastest growing pages, handles and accounts on social media interfaces to get featured on them. Instagram shout-outs is a classic example of the same. If the collaboration is a complimentary service provider, it can be beneficial for both.

Thus, there is no magic formula for a perfect social media strategy for your restaurant. However, these pointers will definitely improve your chances of striking that sweet spot.

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